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Restaurateur Frank Georgatos, seen with his son, Theo, came to Canada from Greece in 1970.

For most men and women living in post-war Greece, times were tough and jobs were scarce. Canada seemed like a golden opportunity if they were the fortunate ones, like Frank Georgatos, to leave the country.

“There were not many jobs at home when I was done school,” says Georgatos, who is now in his 60s and settled in the charming little village of Brighton, Ontario, just east of Toronto. Unlike the bustling city of Toronto where Danforth Avenue thrives with a flourishing Greek community, rural life offered him the comforts of home, very much like where he grew up on a farm, picking fresh oregano in the mountains.

“You had to do what you had to do to survive,” he says. For Georgatos, that meant leaving Greece for Canada at the age of 22 in 1970, following thousands of others who came since before the turn of the century. These Greeks tended to settle in urban centres with a majority going to Montreal, Toronto and, to a lesser degree, Vancouver.

With the growth of Greek immigration after 1905, Greek settlements in Canada began to show signs of ethnic community formation. Greek cultural associations were established to help immigrants adjust to the new society, to combat discrimination and to preserve the Greek language and culture.

First labourers, Greek immigrants later became entrepreneurs who opened restaurants, fruit stores, ice-cream parlours, shoeshine shops and billiard halls in Canada’s larger centres, most notably along Toronto’s Danforth Avenue where in the 1960s, the Greek community officially sprang to life along with the tastes and the sounds of the Mediterranean through shish kebab houses, tavenra, kafenions, and bouzouki music.

As a tribute to the numbers of Hellenic citizens who lived and worked in the area, the Business Improvement Area voted to change the name to GreekTown on the Danforth in 1993. GreekTown on the Danforth is the largest Hellenic business community in North America and indeed is the third largest in the world after Greece and Melbourne, Australia.

For Georgatos, moving to Canada was one of the best decisions he’s ever made.

“At the beginning I didn’t like it,” he admits. But he persevered for what he believed would be a better life.

To learn English, which he knew not a word of, Georgatos bought a dictionary and began to teach himself the foreign language. Working round the clock as a dishwasher, he had no time to go to school, let alone have a life.

“I saved my money because I wanted to open my own businesses,” he says. That dream came true for him several years later in 1977 — Georgatos opened his first take-out restaurant — and in 1984 he opened his own dining room, a tribute to Greece, that is still popular with locals today under the management of his son, Theo.

“I have a great deal of respect for my father,” says Theo, who turned down other career opportunities to stick by his dad and the family business. “He sacrificed a lot for my family.”

That’s not uncommon among Greek families — the family is considered the basis of the social structure. It provides emotional and financial support to its members, and families often work in business together.

While Canadians of Greek origin continue to remain proud of their heritage, keeping the culture alive in their new country, recent immigrants from Greece are rare. While in 2000, 362 newcomers from Greece were counted, by 2009, that number dropped to 205.

Did you know?

In addition to being used for writing, ancient and modern Greek letters are also used as symbols in mathematics and science, as particle names in physics, as components of star names, in the names of fraternities and sororities, and in the naming of supernumerary tropical cyclones.

Montreal architect John Ostell designed a number of prominent Greek Revival buildings, including the first building on the McGill University campus and Montreal’s original Custom House, now part of the Pointe-à-Callière Museum. The Toronto Street Post Office, completed in 1853, is another Canadian example.

Yannis Phokas, the first Greek believed to have visited Canada, arrived more than 400 years ago. He came from the Greek island of Cephalonia and landed on Canada’s West Coast as a member of the Spanish Fleet.

Do not come to Canada you will regret it….I am Greek / Canadian and looking to get the hell out of here, it is not the way it used to be. As a matter of fact lots of Canadian born Europeans are leaving especially Greeks.

We forgave and forgot the discrimination we suffered yet todays immigrants just do not understand. The suffocating politically correct-tolerance culture in Canada is undemocratic and certainly not Grewk. And,like the Italians,Ukranians,Portuguese and all of what Europe contributed culturally to Canada has dissapointingly fallen in vain.